The Student Room Group

GCSE Computer Science / Computing

Hiya,
My older sister loves student room for connecting with other students so I thought I'd give it a go.

I am doing GCSE Computing and we have a teacher that locks the computers and stops the class if one person talks, (I'm in year 11, she can't control a class, and I haven't learned anything since September).

Back in year 10 my entire class failed the mock, as we are coming up to the real mocks and we're only 6 months away from the real GCSEs, I was wondering if the rest of the country are struggling too.

I need my MLO of a 7 to go to the school I want to go to for sixth form, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

P.S: If there is anyone who sat the GCSE in previous years could you let me know of the best study methods and what is 100% necessary to learn,
Original post by Luke_Brand
Hiya,
My older sister loves student room for connecting with other students so I thought I'd give it a go.

I am doing GCSE Computing and we have a teacher that locks the computers and stops the class if one person talks, (I'm in year 11, she can't control a class, and I haven't learned anything since September).

Back in year 10 my entire class failed the mock, as we are coming up to the real mocks and we're only 6 months away from the real GCSEs, I was wondering if the rest of the country are struggling too.

I need my MLO of a 7 to go to the school I want to go to for sixth form, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

P.S: If there is anyone who sat the GCSE in previous years could you let me know of the best study methods and what is 100% necessary to learn,

Hi there, I did GCSE computing last year and am now doing it for a-level. Sounds like you are in a horrible class, I hope it gets better.

My best advice is to watch a lot of Craig n Dave videos on YouTube on a day you are free. Then come back a week later and do the same. Then do the same thing a week later and start making notes. By this time you have grasped the concept of all computing topics (they cover all the topics which is great) and making notes now you will be almost guaranteed to remember them. Now just keep watching the videos little by little all the time, even if you only doing one video a day, and reading your notes while watching them, it’ll bound to stick. I would also highly recommend buying this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/GCSE-Computer-Science-Practice-Workbook/dp/1782946039/ref=pd_sbs_14_t_0/258-2497282-8816926?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=1782946039&pd_rd_r=a46f8640-c856-403a-8d3e-c161319ca57f&pd_rd_w=kRaed&pd_rd_wg=xWecQ&pf_rd_p=e44592b5-e56d-44c2-a4f9-dbdc09b29395&pf_rd_r=2AYQGT47NVD4WXQ71CDE&psc=1&refRID=2AYQGT47NVD4WXQ71CDE

Hope this helps even a bit :smile:
Unfortunately I think most teachers at GCSE have little or no experience teaching it - CompSci was totally new at GCSE about 3-4 years ago, so schools started out with teachers who knew nothing about it - there's still far too few teachers who really understand it themselves, letalone able to teach or explain to someone else.

The most important skill in Computer Science is 'computational thinking' (how to think-like-a-programmer or think-like-a-computer scientist). It's all about problem solving:

Being able to analyse a problem and understand what it's really asking (e.g. understanding what data/inputs you're starting with and what they mean, what the results/outputs should look like)

Break it down into smaller pieces

Look for patterns in the problem, and be able to generalise those patterns.

And finally, be able to write some kind of algorithm which can be expressed in computing/programming terms to get a computer to solve that problem.


Whenever you pick up any kind of programming/algorithm problem, remember that its testing your computational thinking skills. You'll have a whole exam paper on that kind of thing (maybe using pseudocode, flowcharts, trace tables, or other techniques -- they all point back to the same thing). If you focus on learning to become a confident, competent programmer, then that covers you for all of the 'hard stuff'.

I assume you're doing Python since that's the language most people use at GCSE, so here's some really good links for helping to learn it:
https://www.codecademy.com/courses/learn-python
https://www.py4e.com/
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL3072C720775B213E
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6gx4Cwl9DGAcbMi1sH6oAMk4JHw91mC_

Also, try downloading and installing PyCharm Community Edition (a free Python code editor/development environment) : https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/download/ -- this is much, much better for helping you learn to write code than using IDLE.
- using the debugger will also help you a lot and save you loads of time -- https://www.jetbrains.com/help/pycharm/debugging-your-first-python-application.html


The key is to practice however- you can't learn to be a programmer or think like a programmer just by watching videos or reading tutorials - you need to spend your time writing code and thinking about how to solve problems; after a while it'll "click", and the key is to just start out with some really easy/simple problems then move on to the more complicated stuff when you're ready. Try working your way through these: https://www.hackerrank.com/domains/python

There's some good programming challenges to try here too: https://www.ocr.org.uk/Images/202838-20-code-challenges.pdf
(A couple of worked examples from that booklet to give you an idea):
https://ocr.org.uk/Images/203256-averages.pdf
https://ocr.org.uk/Images/203257-mastermind-delivery-guide.pdf

Try some of these for general computer science stuff too:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/subjects/z34k7ty
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsBxhDfwURg-vQASN2ZeHwg
https://student.craigndave.org/
https://studio.code.org/projects/applab/iukLbcDnzqgoxuu810unLw
(edited 4 years ago)
Reply 3
Original post by Luke_Brand
Hiya,
My older sister loves student room for connecting with other students so I thought I'd give it a go.

I am doing GCSE Computing and we have a teacher that locks the computers and stops the class if one person talks, (I'm in year 11, she can't control a class, and I haven't learned anything since September).

Back in year 10 my entire class failed the mock, as we are coming up to the real mocks and we're only 6 months away from the real GCSEs, I was wondering if the rest of the country are struggling too.

I need my MLO of a 7 to go to the school I want to go to for sixth form, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

P.S: If there is anyone who sat the GCSE in previous years could you let me know of the best study methods and what is 100% necessary to learn,


I am also doing computing gsce
are you doing edexcel?
i have a similar problem, my teacher cant control the class however there are revision guides we were reccomended to buy which weren't to expensive and once i find out what the lesson title is i flip to that page in the bpok and take down my own notes as well as the teachers notes. i understand this may be quite late to do since you are in year 11 however it might help to try and if it continues to be an issue maybe speek to someone in a higher position. in my school we only have 1 cp teacher so he has a lot of pressure but i wish you best of luck with your exams :smile:
Reply 4
Computer Science is one of those subjects which comes naturally to some and others have extreme difficulty with it. Unfortunately, statistically computer science teachers are **** (because lets be honest, every other paying job in the IT Industry probably makes more than an IT teacher at GCSE Level) and most people fail because of this.

I am quite fortunate that Computer Science is something which comes naturally to me and I completed the old-spec Computer Science Paper 1 in year 7 and achieved the equivalent in marks to a then A* - and since then I have been teaching my class on a private discord server the ins and outs of how the course works (I had completely learned the J276 OCR course by the end of Year 9 in my spare time.)

Your best bet is watching Craig n Dave videos on youtube or doing practice questions.
Best of luck!

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